First BUILD EVER! intel 1151

[Miroku Asakura]

so i am new to this and i need to build a good server for 20-30 people to use
i was thinking about using the intel z170 platform with an i3 6100
i want z170 due to the RAID tecnlogy
This is what i need for this build
-24/7 on, will not be working 24/7 but i need it to be on all time
-20-30 usage
-Fast speed since it can be uses by 25 people at the same time
-i am not sure if i want to use WD RED or Purple HArd drives

do you think a z170 8GB RAm and a core i3 6100 will be enought for this to work?
i am planing in probably 4TB of storage in a single drive or if i can use 4 WB 1TB drives for this i will be doing a raid 10

hope you guys can help me =) have a niuce day and thank you for your time

 

[CraigD]

Start here
View attachment 15887

 

[Miroku Asakura]

Start here
View attachment 15887

thanks, i read that but it says nothing about z170, the super micro ans asrock c236 are hard for me to find in here that is why i would like to go with intel z170 since it is easier to find

 

[Arwen]

Basically, ZFS does the RAID. Using ANY external hardware RAID is not recommended. Thus, your comment
about "i want z170 due to the RAID tecnlogy" needs some reading by you to understand why it's not recommended.

Further, your comment about "i am not sure if i want to use WD RED or Purple HArd drives" also indicates that
you don't yet understand that NAS drives are different from surveillance uses. Meaning Reds are designed for
mixed reads and writes, while surveillance drives are write mostly.

Last, a single 4TB drive gives you zero redundancy. Many times acceptable for CERTAIN uses. But most people
who come to research FreeNAS want some redundancy. Using 4 x 1TB in a RAID-10 again is not supported by
ZFS, (we call the equivalent stripped Mirrored vDevs).

One comment. When I do planning for a server, is to include expansion options for 3 years. That does not mean
I should buy it all up front. But, filling all the memory slots, PCIe slots and disk slots from the beginning means
you did not plan on any expansion or improvement. Unless you plan on removing existing hardware to replace
with newer or larger, (like larger DIMMs or disks).

 

[Spearfoot]

so i am new to this and i need to build a good server for 20-30 people to use
i was thinking about using the intel z170 platform with an i3 6100
i want z170 due to the RAID tecnlogy
This is what i need for this build
-24/7 on, will not be working 24/7 but i need it to be on all time
-20-30 usage
-Fast speed since it can be uses by 25 people at the same time
-i am not sure if i want to use WD RED or Purple HArd drives

do you think a z170 8GB RAm and a core i3 6100 will be enought for this to work?
i am planing in probably 4TB of storage in a single drive or if i can use 4 WB 1TB drives for this i will be doing a raid 10

hope you guys can help me =) have a niuce day and thank you for your time

The Intel Z170 is a chip-set. Do you have a particular brand and model of system board in mind?

The WD Red drives are designed for use in NAS systems and are a better choice for FreeNAS than the WD Purple drives, which are designed for use in surveillance systems.

FreeNAS does not use or need the RAID technology of the Z170 or any other chipset; it needs direct access to the hard drives. So you should not let chipset RAID features determine your choice of system board. It's more important to select a board with ECC memory and enough SATA ports to support the ZFS configuration you choose to configure.

How will the 20-30 people be using the server? As a simple file server? How much storage space will they use? You may need a faster network with that many users.

These are the kinds of questions you need to answer before you can design a system. We want you to be happy with the system you build, so we respectfully suggest that you study FreeNAS and determine your needs before you build a server. :)

Here is some reading matter that should be useful to you:

http://doc.freenas.org/9.10/

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/updated-forum-rules-8-3-16.45124/
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/zfs-primer.38927/
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/comprehensive-diagram-of-the-zfs-structure.38865/

Good luck!

 

[Miroku Asakura]

well i found the HPE ProLiant ML30 Gen9 SATA which has all i need for the server, what do you think about that server?

and the idea is 20-30 people working in diferent files and sometimes 10 people on the same one, normally are autocad and revit files wich are not so big for what i read that xeon is perfect for what i need, i also will be adding 16GB of ram to the server

EDIT: i am not planing to change the server in 2-4 years and in case we need space i can swap for bigger disk since they only care to
keep old files in case they need them but they are working in more projects at the same time

 

[nightshade00013]

Well, a couple things I notice is that it can either use 4 LFF drives (my guess is 3.5inch) or 8 SFF drives (my guess is 2.5inch) those are max numbers so you will have little to no expansion for the future unless you change cases. You will probably want more than 4 drives so that you can have some better spindle speed for the users. Depending on the situation it may even be worthwhile to a SLOG setup.


The CPU should be fine for serving files, it probably will sit idle 98% of the time depending on what protocol you are using. Which speaking of someone else will need to chime in on what you will need to do if anything to have multiple users edit one file at the same time.

I would like to suggest that before you go buy a HP system and then go it on your own you give the guys at iXsystems a chance to work with you. https://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-certified-servers/ They will make it work for exactly what you need.

 

[Miroku Asakura]

Well, a couple things I notice is that it can either use 4 LFF drives (my guess is 3.5inch) or 8 SFF drives (my guess is 2.5inch) those are max numbers so you will have little to no expansion for the future unless you change cases. You will probably want more than 4 drives so that you can have some better spindle speed for the users. Depending on the situation it may even be worthwhile to a SLOG setup.


The CPU should be fine for serving files, it probably will sit idle 98% of the time depending on what protocol you are using. Which speaking of someone else will need to chime in on what you will need to do if anything to have multiple users edit one file at the same time.

I would like to suggest that before you go buy a HP system and then go it on your own you give the guys at iXsystems a chance to work with you. https://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-certified-servers/ They will make it work for exactly what you need.

the problem is that i live in México, not much choices in here.
The server can be upgraded with some accesories to hold more than 4 HDD, but i do not think that they will need more than 4, actually 4TB i think is more than enought for they needs, i am planing a RAID 10, to have back up and more speed in the array
also the HP server is like 350 bucks and it has 4 GB of ram, the procesor and 1 TB HDD, it also has 1 micro SD slot with i am planing to use to run the SO

 

[nightshade00013]

Well there are a few things you are lacking in your knowledge of FreeNAS that you need to understand hence the reason why I suggest you contact iXsystems.

One big one is the raid levels you quote. FreeNAS uses ZFS, there is no Raid10 there are however vDev's which can be mirrors, multiple vDev's can be put together to create a pool. With that said you are wanting to use 4 X 1TB drives in the system and with two vDev's that consist of two drives mirrored you would have a useable amount total of 2TB minus the overhead, this would be basically the same as raid10 as you lose half the drives to redundancy. Most users have multiple drive pools using RaidZ2 which would give you a little better resilience for failures. If I was setting up the system in question I would look at two to three vDev's minimum using 5 to 6 disks per vDev in a RaidZ2. Minimum disks would be 10 (using 1TB drives this would give a usable space around 6TB in my suggested config) and I would strongly look at a minimum ram amount in the 64GB range if not higher for the workload you are quoting. Even being small files with 20 to 30 users you will have a lot of time lost to the drives seeking the ram will be used as an ARC (Ahead Read Cache) which will hold commonly accessed files so that users don't need to wait for each request, this will be very important at the beginning of the day or when a lot of reads are happening.

Also having mirrors is not a suitable backup for the complete loss of a pool, you will still need some sort of backup solution especially if the loss of data would be crippling to the business.

@Spearfoot gave you a ton of information to read through and the users here want to help as much as we can. But ultimately if you go it on your own in a build your data is only as safe as the decisions you make in the build and how you handle things afterwards. Read, ask questions, read some more, evaluate and then make a decision. FreeNAS may be a good fit and it may not, you have to understand it all to be able to decide.

 

[SweetAndLow]

How will these 20-30 users be using the system? cifs? nfs? Will it be used for just storage or will they be editing off of it? Is this over a 1gig network?

I suggest keep reading the forums and researching. This will give you a much better understanding of FreeNAS and help answer all your questions. You don't seem to have a good grasp of what you want or how to do it yet. To answer your question about z170 chipset the answer is no that is not a good choice for freenas.

 

[Miroku Asakura]

thank you i will read more about this, and i will have a second back up, i want 2 back ups, the second one will go onto a seagate NAS wich we are currently using but the freenas will be replacing it

How will these 20-30 users be using the system? cifs? nfs? Will it be used for just storage or will they be editing off of it? Is this over a 1gig network?

I suggest keep reading the forums and researching. This will give you a much better understanding of FreeNAS and help answer all your questions. You don't seem to have a good grasp of what you want or how to do it yet. To answer your question about z170 chipset the answer is no that is not a good choice for freenas.

yeah this is going on a 1 gig network with a linkys router and 1 gig QoS linkys switches
i need to read more about file system since this will be used in windows and Mac OS X
and at this time for the price and performance i think the HP server is a very good option
thank you all for your time =)